What kind of litter pellets?

[littleindiangirl]

I'm going to try out some more hardwood pellets again, hopefully anyone that uses some can share their experiences? I like the idea of stove pellets because they are still a couple of dollars cheaper than the Equine Fresh I buy, and there is less chance of irritants/phenols from the wood.

I know many of us here swear by the pellets for rat and mouse litter. Brands such as Equine Fresh, Eagle Valley, Woody Pet. These as far as I know are all made from pine.

While Pine is still debated as being harmful to rats in shavings and chips form... how have your animals done on the pellets?

Woody pet touts on it's website that the process by which they process the wood effectively removes all of the oils, acids, tars from the wood.

But how about you people that use the stove pellets?

The stove pellets are debated between hard wood and soft wood. I've been reading up on the differences between types, and I had tried a few different brands out back in the beginning of my searching.

The major thing I didn't like about the pellets I bought is that they never CLEARLY stated what type of wood was used, or whether or not it was 100% hardwood.

Apparently many hardwood pellet brands use additives, cardboard and paper, making the pellets smell weird.

http://www.pelletking.com/wood-pellet-information.aspx

I had bags of weird smelling pellets, but I didn't know that was from the additives.

A good hardwood pellets has no bark, paper, cardboard or "recycled products".

If you use hardwood pellets, they should smell like clean wood.

I stopped using them solely because they smelled worse than the rats pee and poop! Now I'm wondering if the brands I bought were just cheap.

[lord jackel]

I have been using Equine Fresh for about a year now and will NEVER go back to anything else...I use it for all my furry pets and the rats. I have never had any issues what so ever related to the pellets...in fact my rats don't even sneeze anymore (they used to during cleaning day when I would put in new aspen or what not).

When I was going through my testing phase trying different products I tried stove pellets from Tractor Supply (don't remember the brand name) and they were horrible. They broke down very quickly with minimal absorbtion. I would agree with what your research showed that they probably had cardboard or other additivies as it just turned to mush and a pastey goo when really wet.

Hope this helps.

[kc261]

While my daughter was doing her rat maze project we used Equine Fresh as bedding. Overall, I loved it! I never noticed an odor at all, altho my nose is not terribly sensitive to that kind of stuff. Certainly it got to the point where you wanted to change the bedding because it just looked dirty due to the amount of poop before the odor got strong. I also didn't notice the rats sneezing.

The only thing I didn't like is when you first put it in, it sort of tends to roll out from underneath their feet when they walk on it for the first day or 2 until it starts to break down. So I decided to take a small amount, wet it just enough to start it breaking down, spread it out on a baking tray, and dry it out again. Then I'd put that little bit in the cage with the fresh pellets, and it solved the problem. Way too labor intensive to use on a bigger scale, but I assume the same effect could be achieved by adding a small amount of shavings, or even leaving behind just a bit of the old bedding out when you clean the cage.

[Stewart_Reptiles]

After trying many things I than tried stove pellets, it was ok but VERY VERY VERY dusty and the smell when wet was not that great.

Than one day they ran out and I tried Equine Fresh, and I never went back, it is not as dusty when breaking down and it smells a lot better.

I use it as it is for my breeders than for nursing mom (for the first 2 weeks) I use that and some shaving (50/50)

$6.25 a bag of 40lbs is not bad at all and very little goes a long way.

I think the problem is that people use too much of it making it look like it is expensive, I know I made that mistake too.

The major thing I didn't like about the pellets I bought is that they never CLEARLY stated what type of wood was used, or whether or not it was 100% hardwood.

The one from tractor supply that I was getting did say 100% Hard wood

So anyway after trying many different substrates I found the one for me and I would not consider switching back.

[mweippert]

i was just wondering if someone that uses pellet could take a picture of one of their cages to show how much wood pellets to use i think that i used too many and made my apartment smell like a smoke house. i was using the 100% wood pellets from tsc and my girlfriend was pissed and thaught i was smoking in the apartment.

[littleindiangirl]

Don't have a picture with me, but I can try to give a visual. I use 2 deli cup scoops, when in my tubs, the pellets spread out, and don't overlap at all.

Just 1 layer of pellets, no overlapping or stacking of pellets, it covers about 3/4ths of the tub when new. A little less actually. As it breaks down, the tub fills up with about an inch of sawdust.

When I change it after 7 days (saturday), most of the pellets have broken down completely with minimal pellets still in pellet form.